


Withdrawal

by Im_The_Doctor (Bofur1)



Series: The Pacemakers [23]
Category: Transformers Generation One
Genre: Angst and Feels, Bathing/Washing, Canon-Typical Violence, Concerned Friends, Cultural References, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Help, Hiding Medical Issues, Hiding in Plain Sight, Major Character Injury, Mid-Canon, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Obsessive Behavior, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, References to Depression, Relationship Advice, Shooting Range, Traditions, Understanding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-04
Updated: 2016-01-04
Packaged: 2018-05-11 19:42:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5639611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bofur1/pseuds/Im_The_Doctor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>"His gun...how Warpath loves his gun... A mere scratch to his gun's barrel keeps him up, late into the night, polishing it away. When on occasion his gun is damaged seriously enough to impair her function, he is practically inconsolable for weeks."<em></em></em>
</p><p>After that time, Warpath usually bounces back from his trauma and begins to socialize again. Something is different this time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Withdrawal

**Author's Note:**

> Pace - A company or herd of mules; in my headcanon, a family of Minibots; also a traditional expectation and an honor among Minibots who form one.
> 
> One - the first Minibot to agree to join the proposer's pace.
> 
> Culumexian - the form of Cybertronian spoken by residents of Culumex, the Minibot city on Cybertron, or the residents themselves.

The explosion on the battlefield below very nearly took Powerglide out of the air—everyone knew how hard it was to accomplish that—but even as he loop-de-looped back to his cover in the cumulus clouds, he anxiously watched the billow of smoke below, wondering who was going to come out of it.

 _Bot or Con?_ Powerglide’s processor demanded, ready to swoop down and dive-bomb the piece of scrap if it was the latter.

A glimmer of red appeared at the edge of the haze; for a nanoklik Powerglide thought it might be Thrust, but then he recognized the cannon extension from the battered frame. “Warpath,” the flyer said to himself, relieved for his pace-mate’s sake. His relief waned slightly when he saw the way the frame cannon’s barrel was skewed awkwardly to the left. He knew what to expect: poor Warp’ would be inconsolable until Ratchet got the weapon back into alignment. He would feel useless and defective until he had polished the gun several times and crooned sweet, comforting things to it. It was just the way Warpath was.

As Powerglide watched, however, Warpath glanced down at the weapon, swayed and then slumped forward onto it, bending the damaged metal further before tipping onto his side on the ground. Panic cut through Powerglide’s easy flight and he came in for a bumpy landing, some yards away from the fallen warrior. Beachcomber had reached Warpath first, hands hovering over him helplessly.

“What’s wrong with him?!” Powerglide demanded over the blaster fire still sounding around them. “He can usually handle explosions like that!”

Beachcomber shook himself, clearly unsure how to answer. Powerglide scrambled to Warpath’s other side, kneeling next to his frame cannon. A stray piece of shrapnel had pierced Warpath’s left shoulder, various sections of his neck and chest had been seared, and there were some substantial dents.

In other words, nothing Warpath hadn’t experienced before. Nevertheless, it was Warpath’s face which worried him; his optics were half-shuttered and dim, more livid than blue.

“Hey. Hey, you with me?” Powerglide asked in a low, urgent voice, clutching his wounded shoulder and thumbing away the trickle of energon leaving the shard of shrapnel.

“Mmm…” The strobe lights in his facemask followed the example of his optics, barely flickering as they picked up his incoherent…whatever that was. Was it affirmative or negative or a warning? _What?_

Powerglide decided to take it as an affirmative, leaning in and questioning more insistently, “Are you sure? Do you need Ratchet or can you get through the fight?” Whatever he might have said next was cut off by the sudden, sharp burn of blaster fire spraying his arm. He yelped, clutching at it and spotting Skywarp, cackling away at his misfortune. That was all Powerglide could see before Warpath was back on his feet without warning, standing in front of him and cursing.

“Fraggit, my cannon! Too damaged to use…” With that he pulled his handheld blaster, bombarding the enemy. “’Comber, get behind me. Get outta here, Glide, hit ’em from above!”

Powerglide was startled by the sudden change but did as his One suggested, transforming and streaking upward for an aerial assault.

Later on, after they had returned to base and their repairs had been finished, Warpath was just as predictable as Powerglide had suspected—he retreated to the berthroom where most of their pace resided (minus Beachcomber, who had his own room with his animals) and settled into the wash-racks, polishing and rinsing and polishing and rinsing repetitively. Thinking to help him out, Powerglide fended off complaints from Mirage and Sunstreaker about who was stealing all the hot water.

After nearly three weeks of this routine, Powerglide expected everything to return to normal. This was around the time Warpath usually bounced back from his ‘trauma’ and started socializing again. Instead there was nothing…In fact, Powerglide was having trouble even _finding_ him.

He strode with purpose down the halls of the _Ark_ , searching for his other pace-mates rather than Warpath himself. Surely he could find the lost tank—how had he lost a _tank?_ —before there was much cause for worry, but with every minute his worry was increasing.

“Seaspray!” Powerglide called in relief, catching up to the nautical Bot as he wandered up ahead. “Seas’, have you seen Warp’?”

Seaspray looked vaguely surprised. “No, not since…actually I can’t remember the last time I saw Warpath,” he admitted. “Why do you ask?”

“I’m just lookin’ for him and can’t find him,” Powerglide sighed, inadvertently letting a bit of his concern shine through.

“Well, sometimes Warp’ likes to roll on the flatlands out by the lakes. I can keep an optic out, if you like,” Seaspray offered.

Powerglide knew that probably meant he wouldn’t see Seaspray again, but he understood. “Yeh, I’d like that. Thanks.” Seaspray nodded and took off, leaving Powerglide increasingly troubled—mostly with himself. He was the pace-leader and Warpath was his One. That was supposed to be an intimate partnership, friendship, and kinship. Powerglide’s pace wasn’t as close as others, true, but this was proving what he’d known for a while: their distance was worse than he’d thought.

After another few hours of searching, Powerglide found himself beelining straight for the one he almost always came to for the solutions to pace problems.

“How do you _always_ find him?!”

Brawn turned from his target board with a smoking low-power blaster and raised eyebrows. “What? Find who?”

“Huffer,” Powerglide spat, thoroughly frustrated. “When he hides, after getting in one of his ‘moods’—you know what I mean.”

Brawn barked a laugh and shook his helm. “Do I ever; I’m the one dealing with ’em!”

“How do you find him? You always do!” Powerglide repeated, planting his hands on his hips and leaning forward expectantly.

Considering, Brawn half-shrugged one shoulder and ventured toward his board, further out on the _Ark_ ’s range. Once he’d retrieved it and returned, he answered, “I know him well enough to find his spots. Usually he’s just burrowed somewhere in the mess that is his berth, but if it isn’t that, he’ll be in the back of the energon storeroom, or one of the unused rooms with the lights off—heh, one time I found him on top of the underground elevator! Primus knows how he got there.”

“Maybe I’ll check there,” Powerglide muttered. At Brawn’s questioning look, he confessed, “I’m looking for Warpath. He hasn’t been the same since the last battle with the Cons and now he’s gone missing. I just…don’t know him well enough to find him. He’s my One; I’m supposed to know him like you know Huffer! But I don’t.”

Brawn was silent for a nanoklik or two before he commented, “Don’t try to copy us. I’m not gonna get into the mushy stuff, but just because Huffer and I are close in a specific way and it works just right for us doesn’t mean it’ll work for every leader and his One. You gotta have your own thing with Warpath. Besides, why are you so desperate to find him?”

Powerglide pursed his lips and vented sharply outward, throwing up his hands. “It’s our pace’s **fratersarius**.”

Optics widening, Brawn leaned forward and clasped his shoulder, gasping, **::Primonor con geuer flamerc!::**

Chuckling lightly, Powerglide waved off the traditional congratulations with a smile, but it faded soon enough. “I know we aren’t like most paces, but I at least wanted to spend this anniversary together! None of the others seem to have remembered.”

Brawn’s brows lowered over his optics. “Well, if I see any of them, I’ll give ’em a _gentle_ reminder.”

Powerglide caught the emphasis on ‘gentle’ and shoved him lightly. “It’d better be gentle; that’s my pace you’re messin’ with.” Brawn grinned and Powerglide tried to manage a smile in return before he left the training hall.

Once the passing of Powerglide’s wings let the doors close, Brawn pivoted, calling to the seemingly empty room. “Well? What now?”

Warpath trudged out of the deep weapons’ closet, not quite meeting Brawn’s gaze. “Thanks, buddy,” he murmured, sinking onto one of the benches and saying nothing more. Brawn narrowed his optics at him and approached, sitting next to him. He didn’t expect Warpath to explain why he hadn’t wanted his pace-leader to find him; Brawn had a feeling he already knew. But in order to communicate that he knew, he had to venture into ginger territory, where neither of them might want to go: into the mushy stuff.

“Y’know,” Brawn remarked abruptly, “once a long time ago—back when we were still on Cybertron—I was with another pace.” His vents caught slightly upon saying it aloud, but he could read in Warpath’s EM field that there was a stirring of curiosity. “Yeh, I wasn’t always with my pace—in fact I didn’t even know them yet. Anyway, this other pace of mine, I led that one much differently than I lead this one. I led that one kinda like how Powerglide leads yours: loosely, not as committed to each member how I probably should’ve been.” He paused for a moment, rolling his optics at himself and shifting uncomfortably. “Actually, there’s no ‘probably’ about it. I _wasn’t_ as committed to each member as I should’ve been. I didn’t realize it until the pace had started Unraveling.”

Warpath glanced at him in concern and Brawn worked toward a pained smile. “It started,” he continued as though he hadn’t noticed the other Minibot’s look, “when my One shot me. Cardsharp was always a bad shot and even he knew it, so he took me from behind and blasted me in the back. That’s partly why I have this.” He reached over his shoulder and rapped two of his knuckles against the flat, vertical base secured to his backstrut.

“I was into demolition by then and didn’t really want any shielding from it. I didn’t think I needed it, since I’d been named the Unraveler. Why bother shielding myself from death when I’d lost my reason to live? But…I asked for it quick once I learned that, even though I was cursed, I’d be getting a new One.” Putting on mild airs, he lightly clanged his chest, proclaiming, “I’m Huffer’s protection; he doesn’t like to see me with scars. And when I do get them, he tries not to see them. Just as Powerglide tries not to see yours.”

Instinctively Warpath started to edge away from him, but Brawn’s arm shot out and seized his nicely-polished cannon, keeping him there.

“I saw what happened in the battle,” Brawn told him solemnly. “I know that look you got. Whenever something dents my back, no matter how small it is, I’m sure I get it too. You had an injury like that before, didn’t you, under…rather unhappy circumstances?”

Warpath audibly swallowed and then nodded jerkily.

“Hm. So that’s why your vocal program hasn’t been working,” Brawn mused. He felt Warpath startle under his hand and huffed. “C’mon. I’m no less a soldier than you; I’ve seen thousands of Bots who cover their PTSD with something like that. Something ‘out-there’, just off-putting or silly enough to hide what’s underneath.”

On that note he released him and was mildly relieved when he didn’t bolt. Instead they sat in silence, not looking at each other, Warpath’s vents sounding slightly shaky, Brawn’s completely calm. He watched in his peripheral vision as Warpath slowly ran his hands over his battle-masked face.

This wasn’t going to be solved in one day, of course. Brawn couldn’t do all of it for him, but they had to make a change from where they sat right now.

“You remember what today is?” he questioned.

Warpath hummed an affirmative. “ **Fratersarius** ,” he agreed in a word.

Brawn nodded firmly, rising and holding out a hand for him to take. “Let’s go find your leader. You have an anniversary and it’s a special one. Just as important as the one you’ve _been_ upholding.”

Warpath’s optics flickered, studying Brawn’s hand as though it held some unseen trap or power. Whichever he thought it was would influence his decision, Brawn realized—just before Warpath took the hand.

**Author's Note:**

> Fratersarius: the anniversary of a pace's completion  
> Primonor con geuer flamerc: a Prime honor is with your spark


End file.
